On February 7, 2013, Angola awoke to screams of pain and the sound of two women customers of a store being whipped. In just three days the 13-minute video that showed two women being brutally beaten and had more than 25,000 views on YouTube, was aired on state television. It shocked the Angolan community.

Accused of stealing soap and champagne bottles, the women were severely punished and sexually humiliated by several men, including the owner of the store. They later told reporters their ordeal lasted hours.

The aggressors used machetes, nightsticks and hoses to torture the women, in a scene reminiscent of the days of slavery. In a country where the Internet still plays a limited role, it was transformed in this instance into an instrument of greater oversight and allowed the country to see firsthand the meaning of the term “private justice”. The internet, a symbol of emancipation, only now in Angola takes its first steps as a watchdog in service of the people, as journalist Reginaldo Silva explains on Facebook:

I think from today on, social networks earned a new status for those who run this country, with my attention now turned on the judiciary… It is important that the established powers start to face the information that is produced here in a different way…

There were a number of voices raised against the video and expressing their grief and repudiation of the disseminated footage, such as the Prosecutor General Paulo Tchipilica, and the Governor of Luanda, Bento Bento. However in a statement the Radio Eclésia commentator and President of [opposition party] Bloco Democrático, Justino Pinto de Andrade, believes that it is impossible to believe these members of government:

Every day there is gratuitous and barbarous violence against citizens, as though they had no rights, the most fundamental rights. Now, fruit of the exposure this footage enjoyed, we hear manifestations of repudiation by the Prosecutor General, Paulo Tchipilica, and even by the Governor of Luanda, Bento Bento. The question that I pose is the following: is it possible to believe in the manifest “grief” shown by these two men in charge, when their voice of protest is never heard, when people are attacked on the street, when protesters are assailed in barbarous ways

The Group of Parliamentary women also condemned the scenes of violence against the two women. In a communiqué to Lusa news agency, MPLA MP, and former Minister of the Family and Promotion of Women, Candida Celeste Silva said that:

All the women who I heard from today condemning the scene of violence against the two women seem to have ignored that the scenes were witnessed on the spot by at least three women, as the footage itself easily proves. It is a detail that makes some difference and should not be ignored when justice is to be done…

The stolen bottle, Moet Chandon, which costs just 28€, is now associated on social networks with the scenes of aggression, as can be seen on an image shared by Master Ngola Nvunji‎ on Facebook.

We have to rethink the type of country and society that we want to leave for our children and future generations, and in this way we all have to react and nobody can remain indifferent, because unfortunately cases like this are everyday for us… criminality is the fruit of poverty, misery, unemployment, unjust social policies, even the police themselves with low salaries are more worried about gasosa [a way of referring to bribes] for their survival than for the defense of the citizen and the common good.

Angolan state TV reported that the Prosecutor General of the Republic and the National Police have already detained the suspects in the beating case. The Prosecutor also recognized the fundamental role of the dissemination of the video in social networks.

2 comments

Disgusting and yet we live in an age where things get documented on video so that some action can be taken.

I am waiting/dreading the day something like this appears in India. I’m sure stuff such as this must be happening — what remains is for such brutality to be captured on video and the video to be out in the public domain.

And then imagine how much brutality must have occurred during various wars … the killings, mass rapes, etc.

The totality of human cruelty committed against other fellow humans is truly staggering and disgusting.